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practically non-existent. His ears were flaps of skin, which had been stretched tight into pink crevasses, across his skull.
    I asked him his name. It was Abdullah and he told me he was eleven years old.
    Even with the doctor as my guide, I didn’t find the raped women in Atma. They had been moved. But later, I saw Abdullah again, standing in front of a refugee tent. It was his home.
    His parents invited me inside; they told me how he was injured at home in the city of Hama last October.
    It was a clear day: good weather for bombing. When the bombs came that day, Abdullah was playing on his computer. It was always so difficult to keep the children occupied inside, his mother says. Hearing the crash of bombs, Abdullah – in his fear – ran outside.
    He got the full impact of the bomb that landed near his house.
    â€˜I heard the worst thing in the world that day of the bombing,’ the father said. ‘The sound of my own son’s screams of pain.’
    He looked at Abdullah, who stared back at him with confusion.
    Then he said something that both Nada and Shaheeneez also said to me – the mantra their jailers tormented them with. It is the battle cry of the activists, the first demonstrators in Daraa, filtering down to all the Syrian cities, the provinces, and villages: We Want Freedom.
    Abdullah’s father turned towards his son’s raw face. He asked: ‘So is this freedom?’

3
    Ma’loula and Damascus – June–November 2012
    I was in Ma’loula, watching the morning prayers of a group of solemn nuns, a quiet and reflective moment, when I heard about the car bombs back in Damascus. Ma’loula is an ancient mountaintop town dug into a cliff, renowned for its spiritual healing qualities and restorative air. It was a place I felt drawn to: something of an oasis of tolerance. The residents were mainly Christian – it is one of the last places where Western Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ, is still spoken – and they vowed at the beginning of the Syrian conflict not to succumb to sectarianism and be dragged into the chaos.
    Their determination was all the more remarkable given the town’s location. It lies on the main road at an equal distance between Homs and Damascus. It was a defiant place, but their defiance reflected a bitter history.
    Ma’loula was besieged during the Great Syrian Revolt in 1925, when rebel Druze, Christians and Muslims tried to throw off the colonial oppression of France. The history of that insurrection lingers. Many older residents were weaned on stories of women and children hiding in the caves ofthe three mountains that surround the town, to escape atrocities.
    The Christians are largely from the Greek Catholic and Antiochian Orthodox offshoots; the Muslims are Sunnis. But most people would not classify themselves by religion, preferring to say simply, ‘I am from Ma’loula.’
    That morning, I had awoken early in Damascus and drove with my friend, Maryam, a Sunni from Damascus, to Ma’loula, about an hour away. We left our car, and began to walk up and down the streets. There was serenity in the shaded courtyards edged with olive and poplar trees that calmed me after the chaos and noise of Damascus. Maryam described how she had come as a small girl, and watched the nuns go about their daily tasks in a quiet and humble way, making apricot jam, or polishing the candlesticks in the chapel.
    Maryam had a friend, the Sunni imam of the town, Mahmoud Diab. She knocked at his door with some hesitation and asked if we could come inside for tea, and to talk to him. He opened the door, asking us to put on our headscarves, and led us to chairs under the flowering trees. Even in his courtyard, there was still a fading poster of Assad attached to the wall. ‘Do you still support him?’ I asked.
    Diab looked surprised. ‘Of course,’ he said.
    We sat quietly for a few moments waiting for our